Caesar's Camp: La Ferme de Caubert

 

Myself and Graham got together at the Abyss before Xmas for our fourth turn in our Caesar's Camp campaign. This was the second go with our platoons from our third game, so we both had some missing men.

German Defenders-217th Infanterie Regiment (FM10)

2nd Wave Infantry Platoon #3

2 SL's

3 squads of 10 men, lead by a JL's, one squad with a MG08/15-missing 6 men

Supports 12

2 barbed wire

2 minefield

Flamethrower Team

Entrenchment

Infantry Squad

Scottish Attackers-The Cameron Highlanders (FM8)

British EW Infantry Platoon (D Company)

2 Senior Leaders

2" Mortar Team

3 sections of 11 men, lead by Junior Leaders-missing 1 man

Supports 16

Vickers MMG

2" Mortar Team

Sniper

Char B1 bis

Hotchkiss H39

Scenario

This is the Attack and Defend scenario from the main rulebook.  The victory conditions were going to be difficult with the Scots having to capture 2 of the buildings in the German position or reduce their FM to 0. Clearly the latter was going to be easier and I should note that if I brought in AFV's they would be restricted to the road. I had expected that Graham would go with a Bunker Buster, but I guessed wrong!

Game

JOP's, no real advantage to either side but I would have liked to get a little further up on my left flank. The Germans are defending the village to the right of the photo and the Scots were attacking from the left of the table.

Advancing Scots to the right flank as Graham had made my left flank impermeable to attack.

Graham put 2 barbed wire on the road which really shut down any advance of my 2 French tanks, once I moved my troops to their right flank I was able to place the Char bis on the road. It did a pretty good job of showering HE on the buildings.

Graham basically put his men in the stone houses, I felt the Char could deal with this, so I started to lay down smoke and of course at a critical moment a turn end came up so I lost all my cover. I think this was going to be OK as my advancing troops were mostly out of LOS. But then catastrophe, that I should have been able to predict. The Germans ambushed my advancing section with their Flamethrower team, essentially dropping them to 3 figures, my FM fell precipitously and I made the decision to withdraw. Unfortunately some of my men ended up being captured as they were more than 12" from a JOP. A German victory!

The Butcher's Bill

Germans Platoon #3 (6 dead, 1 missing next game)

4 figures lost

CO 0

MO -1

Outlook Cheerful

The Camerons Platoon1/D Company (3 dead, 2 missing next game)

7 figures lost, 5 captured

CO -2

MO-5

Outlook Concerned

CoC Demo

After our game we had a demo game of CoC with 3 new players, all members of our club. From left to right is Dan, Graham (who was checking on my tutorial mistakes), Michele and William. We played on the same table with the same scenario but Dan brought his Italians so we made them defending against the Canadian attackers. I think we all had a good time and I found that the 3 new players picked upon the game quite quickly. I only had to play the Patrol Phase once as we got a satisfactory result. We did not finish the game and did not use any vehicles but we got in all the mechanics including combat. It went quite well and I am pretty confident that they will all want to play again.

Dan's beautifully painted Italians

Myself and Graham will pick up our campaign after Xmas. I am going to have to figure out a way to deal with his ambushing Flamethrower Team!